While action was relatively quiet in the Eastern Theater of upper
Virginia, this was definitely not the case in the river war of the
west. U.S. Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote had started last year with
a dreadful shortage of boats of any sort, gunboats in particular. He
was now on the other side of the problem: by hook, crook,
confiscation, conversion and construction, boats had been obtained,
and he wrote to the Navy Department in Washington for trained
sailors to man them. He asked for 1000. They sent him 500, and told
Foote to get the rest from the Army. This resulted in correspondence
between Generals Halleck in Washington and Grant in St. Louis, and
Grant came up with an idea: He would supply Foote with sailors from
Army men languishing in guardhouses for various offenses.

Tuesday Jan. 6 1863BRITISH BOAT BAGGED BY BLOCKADERS

The fastest way to make the most money, in this year of the American
Civil War, was to successfully run a shipload of supplies into a
seaport of the Confederate States of America. This fact attracted
the attention of shipowners and captains from many parts of the
world other than the Americas. Often they were British, as was the
case today when the vessel was captured trying to make it to Mobile,
Ala. As lucrative as the cargo could be if the blockade was run
successfully, it was just as lucrative to the crew of the capturing
vessel if they failed. The law of the sea stated that the cargo of
such a ship was confiscated, sold, and the proceeds distributed among
the captain and crew of the blockader by a prescribed formula.

Wednesday Jan. 6 1864NAVAJO NATION NASTINESS NOTED

Little-known even to serious students of
the Civil War were actions which took place in the very-far-western
theater, areas neither in the Confederate nor yet the United States
of America. We note today a campaign which took place over the
course of most of January in New Mexico Territory. The participants
were Federal troops under commander Kit Carson on one side, and the
Navajo Nation on the other. Skirmishes and raids had begun yesterday
near Ft. Sumner, N.M., and today continued. Action raged from Fort
Canby to the Canon de Chelly region. Perhaps these conflicts are
better described as "early Indian Wars" actions than as Civil War
fights anyway.

Friday, Jan. 6 1865BUMBLING BUTLER BELATEDLY BOOTED

U.S. Gen. Benjamin Butler had one of the most interesting careers of
any major Civil War figure. Not a terribly successful career, but
definitely interesting. Reviled in the South, object of a
declaration by Jefferson Davis that if he ever fell into Confederate
hands he was to be shot on sight rather than treated as a prisoner
of war, he was coming to be just about as popular in the North. His
last two missions, the assault on Fort Fisher and the excavation of
a canal to bypass chokepoints on the James River to Richmond, had
both been miserable failures. Gen. U.S. Grant decided today this was
a matter up with which he could not put, and wrote Lincoln asking
that Butler be removed from command of the Army of the James. Under
the command structure of the day, if anything had happened to Grant
at this point, Butler would have been his successor.